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Resident Punk: How I Smoked, Drank, and Stumbled My Way Through the '70s Punk Scene
Time-travel to the punk scene of 1970s New York and beyond—as seen through the eyes of its chief reporter known as “the original punk” who gave the movement its name.
Part memoir and part cultural history, Resident Punk offers a no-holds-barred expose chronicling the iconic and unforgettable music scene that would become defined by bands like the Ramones, Blondie, Television, the Heartbreakers, and Talking Heads.
In 1975 at just 19 years old, Legs McNeil—alongside John Holmstrom and Ged Dunn—cofounded PUNK magazine. In doing so, they inadvertently chronicled the start of a movement. McNeil’s role in the whole thing? To be their resident punk, embodying the zeitgeist the magazine was looking to capture, often by getting f*cked up with musicians, artists, writers, and hangers-on . . . and sleeping with a different girl every day of the week.
Now, just in time for the 50th anniversary of PUNK magazine, Legs tells the stories behind the stories in a sleazy, star-studded adventure. The coauthor of Please Kill Me, Legs invites readers along for the ride as he tussles with musicians and artists, groupies and writers, Golden Age Hollywood film stars and legendary figures of ‘70s New York. Featuring untold stories about Joey Ramone, William S. Burroughs, Patti Smith, Alan Vega, Martin Rev, the Dictators, the Dead Boys, Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, and Poly Styrene, this book is an immersive look at the punk music scene as only a true insider can tell it.
What’s more, Legs shares the raw meat of his life, starting with his gritty suburban childhood, and the teenage wasteland years that put him on a path to punk. Join him as he steals David Bowie’s hubcaps, wrestles with Norman Mailer, and lives life on the edge, and wrestles his own demons—eventually setting in a small Pennsylvania town, where he’s very much still the Resident Punk.
Part memoir and part cultural history, Resident Punk offers a no-holds-barred expose chronicling the iconic and unforgettable music scene that would become defined by bands like the Ramones, Blondie, Television, the Heartbreakers, and Talking Heads.
In 1975 at just 19 years old, Legs McNeil—alongside John Holmstrom and Ged Dunn—cofounded PUNK magazine. In doing so, they inadvertently chronicled the start of a movement. McNeil’s role in the whole thing? To be their resident punk, embodying the zeitgeist the magazine was looking to capture, often by getting f*cked up with musicians, artists, writers, and hangers-on . . . and sleeping with a different girl every day of the week.
Now, just in time for the 50th anniversary of PUNK magazine, Legs tells the stories behind the stories in a sleazy, star-studded adventure. The coauthor of Please Kill Me, Legs invites readers along for the ride as he tussles with musicians and artists, groupies and writers, Golden Age Hollywood film stars and legendary figures of ‘70s New York. Featuring untold stories about Joey Ramone, William S. Burroughs, Patti Smith, Alan Vega, Martin Rev, the Dictators, the Dead Boys, Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, and Poly Styrene, this book is an immersive look at the punk music scene as only a true insider can tell it.
What’s more, Legs shares the raw meat of his life, starting with his gritty suburban childhood, and the teenage wasteland years that put him on a path to punk. Join him as he steals David Bowie’s hubcaps, wrestles with Norman Mailer, and lives life on the edge, and wrestles his own demons—eventually setting in a small Pennsylvania town, where he’s very much still the Resident Punk.
304 pages, Hardcover
Expected publication September 15, 2026
About the author
Legs McNeil
15 books217 followersRoderick Edward "Legs" McNeil (b. 1956 in Cheshire, Connecticut), is the co-founder and a writer for Punk Magazine. He is also a former senior editor at Spin Magazine, and the founder and editor of Nerve magazine (print only; 1992).
At the age of 18, disgusted with the hippie movement that seemed to be going nowhere, McNeil gathered with two high school friends, John Holmstrom and Ged Dunn, and decided to create "some sort of media thing" for a living. They settled upon a magazine, assuming that people would "think [they were] cool and hang out with [them]" as well as "give [them] free drinks". The name "Punk" was decided upon because "it seemed to sum up...everything...obnoxious, smart but not pretentious, absurd, ironic, and things that appealed to the darker side". In Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk, McNeil said that the magazine was inspired by two chief influences: Harvey Kurtzman and The Dictators' debut album The Dictators Go Girl Crazy!, indicating that the magazine was started strictly so that its creators could "hang out with the Dictators".
Nicknamed "Resident Punk" in the magazine, he claims (to much dispute) that he was the first person (along with co-founder John Holmstrom) to have coined the term "punk" to describe a certain type of music, fashion, and attitude. He says he came up with the name punk because Telly Savalas used the line "You lousy punk!" on the show "Kojak." According to McNeil: "After four years of doing Punk magazine, and basically getting laughed at, suddenly everything was "punk," so I quit the magazine."
At the age of 18, disgusted with the hippie movement that seemed to be going nowhere, McNeil gathered with two high school friends, John Holmstrom and Ged Dunn, and decided to create "some sort of media thing" for a living. They settled upon a magazine, assuming that people would "think [they were] cool and hang out with [them]" as well as "give [them] free drinks". The name "Punk" was decided upon because "it seemed to sum up...everything...obnoxious, smart but not pretentious, absurd, ironic, and things that appealed to the darker side". In Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk, McNeil said that the magazine was inspired by two chief influences: Harvey Kurtzman and The Dictators' debut album The Dictators Go Girl Crazy!, indicating that the magazine was started strictly so that its creators could "hang out with the Dictators".
Nicknamed "Resident Punk" in the magazine, he claims (to much dispute) that he was the first person (along with co-founder John Holmstrom) to have coined the term "punk" to describe a certain type of music, fashion, and attitude. He says he came up with the name punk because Telly Savalas used the line "You lousy punk!" on the show "Kojak." According to McNeil: "After four years of doing Punk magazine, and basically getting laughed at, suddenly everything was "punk," so I quit the magazine."
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
My thanks to NetGalley and BenBella Books for an advance copy of this biography about a man, music, writing, fighting, finding oneself, more music, and being a chronicler, being present, and a scene that seems more of a dream than reality.
Unlike the writer of this book I was born in the Bronx. Legs McNeil was born in Cheshire, Connecticut. I grew up in Connecticut, and McNeil took the first chance he could to get out of his small, confining, town and flee to the Big Apple, a city that at the time had been given up by the federal government, and many others, including my own parents. Except for needing oxygen, that is where our similarities end. Though considering all the cigarettes that McNeil has smoked over the years, maybe he doesn't even need oxygen anymore. McNeil is a teller of tales, a chronicler of an age where music was going through a delayed adolescence, trying to shake off the commercial stink, the easy peaceful feeling, the ABBA of it all, and be what it was when rock first hit. Scary, dangerous and full of fun. This is his story, and what a story it is, full of myth breaking, myth making, smoke, drugs, failure, success and whole lot more. Resident Punk: How I Smoked, Drank, and Stumbled My Way Through the '70s Punk Scene (and Beyond) by Legs McNeil with Crispin Kott, is a biography, a confession, a search for family, and love, with lots about music, entertainment, people famous, infamous, and lots of bad behavior.
Roderick Edward McNeil was born in Cheshire Connecticut, a boy without a father, and with a mother who didn't want to be there. McNeil was the baby of the family, and he spent days crawling through swamps, looking for snapping turtles, and watching bad television, two things that would help him later in life. McNeil's life wasn't quiet. Trouble was always around, from pranks in school, to selling drugs in Mexico while on vacation at age 13. McNeil escaped to New York, supposedly for school, but as that wasn't going to work out anyway, he never bothered. Instead he worked in film where he could, both straight and slightly illegal movies, an interest that later lead to a book. McNeil was making a bit of money helping to write a comic strip for Scholastic when he found a band that literally changed his life. The Dictators. This band made his friends want to create a magazine that covered this kind of music, angry, different, defiant, odd, and life changing. PUNK magazine was born. A magazine that soon gave a name to a nascent form of music. Legs, as he nicknamed himself, soon began to rove the venues CBGB and others, making friends, making enemies, in Lou Reed, and more, covering the music, writing about the scene, and soon made a name for himself in music criticism. Culminating in the first real book about the punk scene, a book that still holds up even many years later, Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk along with other books.
The book tells of McNeil's life in details that are almost Dickens-like with a mix of Rimbaud. A real punk one would say, with a sad backstory, but an attitude and a desire to survive. And thrive. One one think there is a lot of fables being written here, but there isn't. Stories that sound like come on man, end with results that seem true. Dreams ending covered in syrup one could say. The writing is funny, and honest. McNeil is as quick to make fun of himself as he is of Lou Reed. There are a lot of jokes, a lot of comic references, and though McNeil wrote about music, there is not that much about the music, more the musicians, like Joey Ramone, Debbie Harry and others.
A Bildungsroman with a bit of a soundtrack. A look at a vanished age where the hope that music would save the world fell apart. A look at writing, journailms following your dreams and mouths filled with cigarette smoke, and sadness. I enjoyed this quite a bit, both for the social history, the music history, and the fact the McNeil lived a really fascinating life. A book for people who like all that, as well as well-written biographies.
Unlike the writer of this book I was born in the Bronx. Legs McNeil was born in Cheshire, Connecticut. I grew up in Connecticut, and McNeil took the first chance he could to get out of his small, confining, town and flee to the Big Apple, a city that at the time had been given up by the federal government, and many others, including my own parents. Except for needing oxygen, that is where our similarities end. Though considering all the cigarettes that McNeil has smoked over the years, maybe he doesn't even need oxygen anymore. McNeil is a teller of tales, a chronicler of an age where music was going through a delayed adolescence, trying to shake off the commercial stink, the easy peaceful feeling, the ABBA of it all, and be what it was when rock first hit. Scary, dangerous and full of fun. This is his story, and what a story it is, full of myth breaking, myth making, smoke, drugs, failure, success and whole lot more. Resident Punk: How I Smoked, Drank, and Stumbled My Way Through the '70s Punk Scene (and Beyond) by Legs McNeil with Crispin Kott, is a biography, a confession, a search for family, and love, with lots about music, entertainment, people famous, infamous, and lots of bad behavior.
Roderick Edward McNeil was born in Cheshire Connecticut, a boy without a father, and with a mother who didn't want to be there. McNeil was the baby of the family, and he spent days crawling through swamps, looking for snapping turtles, and watching bad television, two things that would help him later in life. McNeil's life wasn't quiet. Trouble was always around, from pranks in school, to selling drugs in Mexico while on vacation at age 13. McNeil escaped to New York, supposedly for school, but as that wasn't going to work out anyway, he never bothered. Instead he worked in film where he could, both straight and slightly illegal movies, an interest that later lead to a book. McNeil was making a bit of money helping to write a comic strip for Scholastic when he found a band that literally changed his life. The Dictators. This band made his friends want to create a magazine that covered this kind of music, angry, different, defiant, odd, and life changing. PUNK magazine was born. A magazine that soon gave a name to a nascent form of music. Legs, as he nicknamed himself, soon began to rove the venues CBGB and others, making friends, making enemies, in Lou Reed, and more, covering the music, writing about the scene, and soon made a name for himself in music criticism. Culminating in the first real book about the punk scene, a book that still holds up even many years later, Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk along with other books.
The book tells of McNeil's life in details that are almost Dickens-like with a mix of Rimbaud. A real punk one would say, with a sad backstory, but an attitude and a desire to survive. And thrive. One one think there is a lot of fables being written here, but there isn't. Stories that sound like come on man, end with results that seem true. Dreams ending covered in syrup one could say. The writing is funny, and honest. McNeil is as quick to make fun of himself as he is of Lou Reed. There are a lot of jokes, a lot of comic references, and though McNeil wrote about music, there is not that much about the music, more the musicians, like Joey Ramone, Debbie Harry and others.
A Bildungsroman with a bit of a soundtrack. A look at a vanished age where the hope that music would save the world fell apart. A look at writing, journailms following your dreams and mouths filled with cigarette smoke, and sadness. I enjoyed this quite a bit, both for the social history, the music history, and the fact the McNeil lived a really fascinating life. A book for people who like all that, as well as well-written biographies.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Thank you to NetGalley and Brilliance Publishing for the advance audio version of this book. All thoughts are my own.
Legs McNeil was an icon of the 70s New York punk scene, and the first book of his that I read, Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk (co-authored by Gillian McCain), was killer. This is a much more personal tome filled with anecdotes of his life, both in and out of the scene he wrote about previously.
What I Loved
Legs doesn't give a shit what you think of him, and his unabashed attitude is what I appreciate most. The inclusion of stumbled in the subtitle of this book is there very intentionally, as he never really did anything normally. You can almost smell the stale beer and cigarette smoke as he talks through his exploits. I particularly enjoyed his detailing how the Punk zine came about, and how he used it sometimes to get into clubs for free. That tickled me, as I cannot say I wouldn't have done the same thing. Though this is more his story, there are still some solid nuggets of punk and NY rock history here. The second-to-last story in this book, regarding his relationship with Shannon McNamara, both oddly endearing and ultimately heartbreaking.
What I Thought Could Have Been Better
This is a memoir, so there is not really anything I could say that would make what he wrote better.
The Audio Narration
I thought Mark Engelhardt did an exceptional job with the narration. There's a real sense of that punk attitude, and I loved when he would lightly imitate the voices of famous people. The Iggy Pop and Tom Waits voices were my favorites.
Overall
I enjoyed this. It sometimes felt like an addendum of Please Kill Me, and maybe it started out that way. But I did appreciate more insight into McNeil himself. I can already recognize that this book will not be for everyone, especially someone with a puritan's pearl-clutching tendencies. But for those of us who have ever been part of a scene, you will recognize archetypes that carry over no matter the decade.
Legs McNeil was an icon of the 70s New York punk scene, and the first book of his that I read, Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk (co-authored by Gillian McCain), was killer. This is a much more personal tome filled with anecdotes of his life, both in and out of the scene he wrote about previously.
What I Loved
Legs doesn't give a shit what you think of him, and his unabashed attitude is what I appreciate most. The inclusion of stumbled in the subtitle of this book is there very intentionally, as he never really did anything normally. You can almost smell the stale beer and cigarette smoke as he talks through his exploits. I particularly enjoyed his detailing how the Punk zine came about, and how he used it sometimes to get into clubs for free. That tickled me, as I cannot say I wouldn't have done the same thing. Though this is more his story, there are still some solid nuggets of punk and NY rock history here. The second-to-last story in this book, regarding his relationship with Shannon McNamara, both oddly endearing and ultimately heartbreaking.
What I Thought Could Have Been Better
This is a memoir, so there is not really anything I could say that would make what he wrote better.
The Audio Narration
I thought Mark Engelhardt did an exceptional job with the narration. There's a real sense of that punk attitude, and I loved when he would lightly imitate the voices of famous people. The Iggy Pop and Tom Waits voices were my favorites.
Overall
I enjoyed this. It sometimes felt like an addendum of Please Kill Me, and maybe it started out that way. But I did appreciate more insight into McNeil himself. I can already recognize that this book will not be for everyone, especially someone with a puritan's pearl-clutching tendencies. But for those of us who have ever been part of a scene, you will recognize archetypes that carry over no matter the decade.
September 15, 2026
I have always been fascinated by the Punk scene. I was born too late for it, but- everyone I've ever met who was seriously Punk with a capital P was wildly creative, vibrant and totally interesting. Legs McNeil- the "resident Punk" was part of the start of all of it. He narrates through Crispin Kott the story of both his life, which is irrevocably intertwined with the punk movement of the 1970's.
Brilliance Audio generously shared an advanced copy of the audiobook, and with narration by Mark Engelhardt, I actually sort of felt like I was basically in a casual conversation with McNeil himself. I did check a few times because the narration was so natural I thought maybe it was McNeil doing the narration.
Readers are given stories of McNeil's upbringing, and also many non published stories of the movers and shakers in the Punk scene, Joey Ramone, The Dictators, Elvis Costello, Poly Styrene and more.
This is a great production, and I found myself continuing to think - just a few more minutes- every time I was going to put away my headphones. Some have called Legs the coolest guy in the room and I'm starting to believe it.
Put this on your list if you'd enjoy a memoir with a few tales that read like fiction but are true indeed.
Brilliance Audio generously shared an advanced copy of the audiobook, and with narration by Mark Engelhardt, I actually sort of felt like I was basically in a casual conversation with McNeil himself. I did check a few times because the narration was so natural I thought maybe it was McNeil doing the narration.
Readers are given stories of McNeil's upbringing, and also many non published stories of the movers and shakers in the Punk scene, Joey Ramone, The Dictators, Elvis Costello, Poly Styrene and more.
This is a great production, and I found myself continuing to think - just a few more minutes- every time I was going to put away my headphones. Some have called Legs the coolest guy in the room and I'm starting to believe it.
Put this on your list if you'd enjoy a memoir with a few tales that read like fiction but are true indeed.
Read
September 15, 2026I received an audiobook ARC of this novel in thanks to the publisher and NetGalley.
"Resident Punk" is a novel that is pitched as part memoir part cultural history. Legs McNeil played a huge, influential role on the punk scene in the 1970's, and truly beyond. In this memoir, he shares the stories that shaped him and the path he took to become the journalist that got in on the ground floor of such a pivotal time.
The one element that continued to stick out to me throughout the entire novel was how unapologetic Legs was about who he was. He knew what was important to him and he went after it; which honestly is very punk.
I found his life story so intriguing, mostly because it is such a stark contrast to my own. I loved following along on his journey while also learning about some of the lore behind other influential people and bands of the time. This memoir is peppered with personal stories as well as facts perfectly, and it highlights the punk scene of the seventies wonderfully.
The audiobook was excellently produced and once I started listening, I did not want to turn it off.
I highly recommend this novel to anyone who is curious about Legs McNeil, the punk scene, or if they simply want to hear a really rad story.
"Resident Punk" is a novel that is pitched as part memoir part cultural history. Legs McNeil played a huge, influential role on the punk scene in the 1970's, and truly beyond. In this memoir, he shares the stories that shaped him and the path he took to become the journalist that got in on the ground floor of such a pivotal time.
The one element that continued to stick out to me throughout the entire novel was how unapologetic Legs was about who he was. He knew what was important to him and he went after it; which honestly is very punk.
I found his life story so intriguing, mostly because it is such a stark contrast to my own. I loved following along on his journey while also learning about some of the lore behind other influential people and bands of the time. This memoir is peppered with personal stories as well as facts perfectly, and it highlights the punk scene of the seventies wonderfully.
The audiobook was excellently produced and once I started listening, I did not want to turn it off.
I highly recommend this novel to anyone who is curious about Legs McNeil, the punk scene, or if they simply want to hear a really rad story.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
I loved this book! In all honesty, I’ve met Legs a few times and have a phone number for him in my phone, which probably isn’t good anymore. That being said, that had nothing to do with my loving this book.
It’s always been interesting to read his work, but since he lived through it all, I’ve always wanted to hear about his story. As usual, he doesn’t disappoint. He looks at his life honestly and doesn’t sugarcoat very much. This took me to the times and places that would be the first stop in any Time Machine travel I get. There’s a feel of NYC in the 70’s and Legs has always been able to bring that feeling to life. This book shows that he helped create that feeling and that he’s always just been showing his love for the city.
It’s a gripping, powerful, but yet fun read and I recommend it to everyone. No, seriously, read this as soon as you can!!!
Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC, all opinions are my own.
It’s always been interesting to read his work, but since he lived through it all, I’ve always wanted to hear about his story. As usual, he doesn’t disappoint. He looks at his life honestly and doesn’t sugarcoat very much. This took me to the times and places that would be the first stop in any Time Machine travel I get. There’s a feel of NYC in the 70’s and Legs has always been able to bring that feeling to life. This book shows that he helped create that feeling and that he’s always just been showing his love for the city.
It’s a gripping, powerful, but yet fun read and I recommend it to everyone. No, seriously, read this as soon as you can!!!
Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC, all opinions are my own.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
As someone born long after the 70s, but with a huge appreciation for the punk scene and how it evolved modern alternative music, I was really excited for this book. I love that it comes from such a personal place of experience and anecdotes, and the author does a great job of taking you along on the ride with him. It's obvious this is as much a personal reflection for the author, who's excited to tell his story, as it is supposed to be informative about the scene at the time. It's a unique take on how most music scene reflections are told, and I really did appreciate the personal touches.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews